Alan Pakula has re-created the powerful moments of William Styron’s novel, but he hasn’t made a film: this 1982 drama is completely devoid of cinematic interest, adopting instead a tiresome theatrical aesthetic in which showy monologues are filmed in interminable, usually ill-chosen long takes. Surprisingly for Pakula, the directorial choices throughout are banal and conservative: once again we are given a vision of Auschwitz as a hellish other world, safely removed in time, space, and color intensity from our own. Meryl Streep, in a cloud of technique, is completely opaque as the charismatic camp survivor, though Peter MacNicol is refreshingly honest as the young southern writer who falls under her spell. With Kevin Kline.
Sophie’s Choice
R • 2 hours 37 min